palmistry
by YACCBS
Summary: Rose develops a slight fascination with his hands. NinexRose.


**palmistry**

_(You just need to be delicate.)_

Rose develops a slight fascination with his hands.

* * *

It begins as a series of observations.

She stands surrounded by murderous manikins when a stranger takes her hand. His touch is cool and dry and even when they are running for their lives and her palms are sweating from a mix of adrenaline and fear, his barely warms. It's an oddity that doesn't really register until she finds herself standing in a spaceship that is bigger on the inside, confronted by his bald confession that yes, he is not of this world.

_Is that alright?_

She thinks of hands and the absence of heat and the fact he saved her life and realizes she doesn't care what he is so much as who he is.

_Yeah._

They stand bathed in the red light of a dead Earth. His hand squeezes hers – in apology, in empathy, in concern. They say everything he does not and she understands, with a startling clarity, that his hands are his tell. Later, when he speaks of the fate of his home and his people, the clenched fists he stuffs in his pockets fill in the gaps left by a voice that is too steady. They speak of rage, of grief, of loneliness. She can't do much about the first two, but as for the latter –

_There's me._ He doesn't quite believe her; she isn't too confident herself. But chips with a friend are the least she can do for him, and when she offers him her hand he takes it in something a little like hope.

They stand in a morgue in Cardiff, dead fingers reaching for them and nowhere to run. They're about to die and turn into ghouls and she is, to be perfectly honest, completely terrified. She takes the Doctor's hand, determined to hold on to the very end (_together? Yeah)_, and when he laces his fingers through hers she marvels at just how well they fit. Rose Tyler and the Doctor, two parts of a whole. The teenager in her longs to call it destiny.

_I'm so glad I met you._

And it might be pretty shitty as far as destinies go, doomed to die before she's even been born, but he's beaming at her and his thumb brushes her knuckles and she knows she wouldn't change a moment of it, these mere hours they've shared. She squeezes his hand and smiles back, completely sincere when she says _me too._

They tumble through the air in a closet doubling as a bomb shelter, smacking into shelves and each other and Harriet Jones, MP Flydale North. Not once does she let go of his hand, and with a detachment that is probably inappropriate for someone ragdolling in a steel box, she admires his calluses; hands made rough by hard labour and harder decisions. She wonders what stories his hands could tell if she really took the time to study them, if she could read his palms like the fortune-teller Mum once took her to and through them discern his fate.

Perhaps they could tell her just what it meant that he wouldn't sacrifice her even to save billions of others.

Before she can dwell on it further, Ms Flydale North's knee ends up in her stomach. It drives the air from her lungs and all thoughts of palm-reading from her mind, but she still doesn't let go of his hand.

Several days later they stand in an underground bunker full of alien artifacts and the Doctor plays an instrument.

"You just need to be…delicate," he says, and he runs gentle fingers along the grooves, coaxing out beautiful, alien sounds. And just like that it's as if someone's thrown a switch and illuminated those hands she's spent weeks cataloguing in an entirely new and decidedly un-scientific light. And Rose, for the life of her, can't seem to turn it off again.

She is staring – luckily so is everyone else, albeit for different reasons. She is still staring when he hands it back, and has to shake her head, forcefully refocusing back on the situation at hand. It takes far more concentration than it should, but soon enough the wanker behind the desk confirms her suspicions that he is, in fact, a wanker, providing the first in a rapid chain of increasingly deadly distractions that keep her mind well occupied for the rest of the day.

By the time they end up back on the TARDIS, Adam in tow, she is exhausted. She announces her need for a quick nap; the Doctor gives her an indignant look.

"You're just gonna leave me here with _him_?" he asks, jerking a thumb towards Adam, who might have been offended if he wasn't preoccupied clutching the console, staring around the room and looking like he's about to puke.

"It'll just be for an hour or two. You can come and wake me if he gets too much for you."

The Doctor scowls. "Sure, find yourself a nice little pet and then dump it on my doorstep. Go on then, off you go. Sleep your life away."

She rolls her eyes but can't quite keep herself from grinning. She turns to leave, but is brought to an abrupt halt when the Doctor reaches out and grabs her hand with one of his. He twines cool, callused fingers through hers, swallowing as he meets her gaze.

"Thank you," he says. "For stopping me. If you hadn't been there – " His grip tightens. _I thought you were dead._ She doesn't even need palm-reading this time; he can't keep the fear out of his eyes.

"Hey," she murmurs, turning to face him fully. "I'm still here, yeah? And no more Daleks – that's good, right?"

Judging by the way his grip doesn't slacken, to him it's not that simple.

"I would've killed it. Would've exterminated it, would've ended an entire race, and I wouldn't have even thought twice while I was doing it." He looks away from her, stares at something no one else can see. "What does that make me?"

She starts to tell him that he never would've gone through with it, but she remembers how he screamed at her to get out of the way and the words die on her tongue. The Doctor notes her hesitation, and grins without amusement.

"It's alright. What's one more Dalek compared to the billions who died in the Time War? It's not like I haven't got plenty of blood on my hands already."

He starts to pull away, but Rose refuses to let go.

"If you're done answering your own questions, maybe you'll let me have a go, yeah?" There's no keeping the anger out of her voice, and the Doctor blinks, looking taken aback by her vehemence.

"I dunno what exactly you had to do in that Time War," she starts. "But I just watched that Dalek murder hundreds of people, and that ain't you, Doctor. You've had to make some hard decisions, yeah, but you're no killer. Maybe – maybe you would've shot that Dalek. But in the end you didn't, and that's what counts."

The Doctor's lips are pressed into a tight line. "Only because you were there to stop me."

"Yeah, well, good thing I ain't goin' anywhere then, isn't it?" She turns his hand over, coaxes it open, traces the lines of his palm with her thumb. "You're a good man, Doctor. Considering. For an alien, that is."

She offers a tentative grin, and after a moment is rewarded when some of the tension eases out of him. He sniffs loudly.

"Don't start comparing me to you lot. That's considered a criminal offense in some places, you know."

"Are we really so bad?"

He shrugs, blue eyes bright with mirth. "Eh, some of you are alright. Not you, of course. You're the worst of them all, you are."

She slugs him in the shoulder with her free hand, but he's beaming at her and she can't help but beam back, tongue caught between her teeth.

"Rose Tyler," he begins, with wonder in his voice and something like affection in his eyes, but she interrupts him with a loud yawn she can't suppress. His eyebrows lift up. "Sorry, am I boring you?"

"Oi, shut it. I'm just – " she yawns again – "tired."

"You don't say." He laughs softly when she shoots him a look. "Right then, shoo. Go nap. I guess I'll give your boyfriend the tour." He drops her hand, and her fingers flex involuntarily at the loss of contact. Her feet, however, have already started her away from the console room and towards her bedroom.

"'S not my boyfriend," she calls over her shoulder, but the Doctor just waves her on her way, watching her go with a smirk. She drags herself through the corridors of the TARDIS, all but stumbling into her bedroom and collapsing onto her bed. She blearily kicks off her trainers and burrows into the duvet. Sleep claims her almost immediately; her last thought before unconsciousness is to wonder what happened to that instrument.

* * *

She dreams of his hands.

They splay across her abdomen, fingertips tracing invisible sheet music across her skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. A callused thumb brushes across her lips; a hand tangles in her hair. "You just have to be delicate." Northern tones rough in contrast to the fingers that rest lightly at the pulse on her neck before trailing downwards to explore the ridge of her collarbone, the slope of a breast. Blue eyes dark above her as a hand settles on her knee and then drifts inexorably upwards, up up up –

She wakes with a gasp, tangled and flushed in the pink sheets of her bed. For a moment she lies there, staring at the star map on the ceiling, trying to settle her breathing.

"Well," she says at last into the silence of her room. "That's new."

* * *

She emerges into the console room some time later, freshly showered and ready for the next adventure. The Doctor looks up and peers at her from behind the whirring time rotor, grinning like a loon.

"Perfect timing, Rose! We're just about to land."

She grins back, and tries not to stare at his hands as they move confidently along the console controls. Casting about the room, she notes Adam sitting on the floor, a box full of alien parts in front of him that he is studying with unabashed glee.

"So how was the tour?"

The Doctor shrugs. "Didn't bother. Dug out some harmless odds and ends for him to play with instead. Less supervision required." From the Doctor's tone it's clear he has yet to warm up to Adam. Rose takes more pleasure in this fact than she really should. Before she can comment, the TARDIS groans, and she grabs a railing for balance as the Doctor takes them through a typically rocky landing.

"Right then," says the Doctor as with one final clunk the TARDIS finishes materializing. "Shall we make sure the coast is clear? Wouldn't want Adam getting scared by anything unexpected."

He holds out a hand towards her. She hesitates, feels herself flush slightly. The Doctor's eyebrows shoot up.

"Unless you'd rather wait for him?" he asks, tilting his head to where Adam is only now starting to sit up after being thrown about by the landing. She watches him rub his elbow, a pained look on his face, and for all his pretty features she can't imagine holding his hand.

"Nah," she says, taking the Doctor's proffered hand and meeting his eyes, and perhaps he sees some remnant of her earlier dream there because his hand twitches in hers and his eyes darken a fraction. Then his eyes flit to their hands, so quick she almost misses it, and it occurs to her that maybe she's not the only one with an interest in palm-reading.

"Right then, Rose Tyler," and there's something smug and slightly possessive in the way he says her name. "Ready to be impressive?"

* * *

They stand in a lift two hundred thousand years in the future, on their way to what is most likely mortal danger. She should feel a bit guilty that they've all but abandoned Adam, but really she just feels relieved. The Doctor seems equally pleased with this development.

_Looks like it's just you and me._

_Yeah._

_Good._

_Yep._

He takes her hand and there is no more need for words.


End file.
